David Keenan: "Speak to your friends, tell them you love them often...celebrate your weirdness"

I wear the Green Ribbon of SeeChange Ireland to promote positive mental health awareness, understanding, and the many dialogues which surround it.

Loneliness and isolation are silent killers, the pressure to conform to societal norms or the general consensus both online and in the real world can be crippling. We must embrace our vulnerabilities now more than ever as humans experiencing the human condition, removing the hyper competitive desire to be weller than well all of the time while devoting more energy to our online avatars than we devote to ourselves.

Speak to your friends, tell them you love them often, challenge their views, let them challenge yours. Embrace your eccentricities and fallibilities, do your best, celebrate your weirdness. Don’t allow social media to act as the judge who scores your efforts out of ten. Take a break from your phone and spend time in nature, get into the sea. Allow yourself to grieve and heal.

This year has been a battle for many and as the restrictions and the static continue to ebb and flow, remember to check in with yourself and the ones that love you for all that you are.

• Order the mental health special issue of Hot Press now.